[Because this is far easier over voice. Fenris doesn't bother with greetings; just puts him on speaker, holding the phone up while he settles in bed.]
I do not know if I'd call her nice, Harlan. She could be kind, if she wished, especially to Merrill— but nice? No.
[He tucks one hand under his head.]
She was vicious. Ruthless. And frighteningly cheerful during battle, [he says with a small, rumbling chuckle.] I was walking home at night from the Hanged Man. Gangs aren't uncommon in Kirkwall; it was not a shock to be mugged, and I did not mind the fight. But they were more overwhelming than I had anticipated.
I had killed two already. One I stabbed through the stomach; the other's head was removed. But I was drunk, and they were numerous. Four were left. Two of them had me against a wall; one was intent on slicing me open.
And then there was Isabela.
[The smile is so evident in his voice.]
She wields two blades. She could have been done with them in an instant, but she decided to enjoy herself. She announced herself with a taunt, but they did not take her seriously until she had slit a throat. Then they released me, but ah, it was too late . . .
I suppose I could have helped her. But I enjoyed watching instead.
[Hm hm hm . . .]
Shall I tell you how she dismembered them, Harlan?
[He's tempted to shoot back something snotty, a classic "no" perhaps, but Fenris is already calling and... well, evidently this is happening.
Thank god Fenris immediately starts talking, too. Skipping straight past any preamble is exactly Harlan's speed. Even better, all he has to do for the moment is listen.
He's spent most of their conversation leaned up against the window of his hotel room, the lights off so he could survey the city below. He's on a high enough floor that he doesn't need to worry about privacy, but he pulls the curtain shut anyway, leaving just enough light peeking in to navigate the room. Fenris asks his question just as Harlan sits down on the edge of the bed.]
Obviously. Are you gonna gloss over that, too? "His head was removed." Come on.
[There's no real effort in the sassing, just nerves.]
I stuck my blade into his throat and dragged it left until his head was forcibly torn from his body.
[It's tart, teasing in the horribly gory way they can get. Fenris tips his head back, his eyes closing as he remembers. It was a good night. Even those first awful moments, when he'd had his back up to the wall and a blade coming ever-closer, weren't so bad. He's a deadly man; there was no question of his life being in danger. Just inconvenience, and maybe the loss of a few coins.]
The first took a blade to his back, but it did not linger there long. Isabela specializes in moving swiftly and applying any number of precise, deadly cuts. To his arms, his stomach, his thighs . . . he fell swiftly, but she was not done yet. He was still alive, and people have a way of getting to their feet for some heroic last stand. He staggered up, bleeding freely already, coloring the cobblestones scarlet.
[He lifts one leg idly, flexing it in the semi-darkness, feeling the pleasant burn in his calf as he does.]
So she cut through his heel chords.
[Or his Achilles tendons, if your culture is based around such mythos.]
No getting up after that. He lay there uselessly, his heart working against him as it pumped his blood steadily out of his body. I do not know how long he lived after that. Minutes, perhaps. She is, if nothing else, terribly efficient.
The other, who by this time had released me and grabbed his sword, was harder. He put up a decent fight, and for a time fended her off, but he stumbled in his comrade's blood, and that was all the opening she needed. Within half a second she had one of her blades sunk deep into his stomach. She sliced him open, til his innards spilled onto the streets. The other blade sliced into his chest, then his throat. I think it was the last that killed him, but there was no coming back from the wound from his stomach.
[He laughs quietly.]
And then she rushed me. Covered in blood and hungry to sate a different sort of lust.
[But there's approval in his voice. It is gross—beheading and disemboweling don't cater to his very specific tastes—but he appreciates the visual nonetheless. It's fittingly brutal.
He does like the sound of Isabela, though. Death by a thousand cuts is a more exciting tactic to him than one big showstopper. He prefers to draw it out, make a game of it. especially if the other guy was trying to kill him first. He imagines there's a special sort of satisfaction in that, bleeding someone out not just because he could, but because he won. And right there in the open too, a murder that he wouldn't have to sweep under the rug.
That's an interesting thought, too: Getting to show off like that. Killing with an audience has never been of interest to him, but he does like the thought of someone getting to witness glimpses of it, the moments he's proud of, his version of Isabela's three-part finishing move. Evisceration may not be his style, but god, what must it feel like? Tearing a knife through a body is more difficult than you might think, especially with muscles and tendons getting in the way. Slicing someone up like that takes effort, and he can't help but replay the image of her slashing through a body in three quick, elegant motions over and over again in his head.
He lies back on his own bed. Normally he'd opt for speakerphone, but he likes the closeness of Fenris' voice in his ear for something like this.]
She's got the right idea when it comes to foreplay. Tell me you didn't fuck right there on the street.
She wished to. And I will not say I didn't consider it. But Bela is best savored, and fucking her against an alley wall wouldn't let me take her apart inch by inch.
[His voice dips a little lower. Not on purpose, not the way he does sometimes when he wants to menace people, but naturally.]
We began in the hallway. She was particularly good at removing my armor; she was adept, too, in getting me exactly how she wanted me. By the time I had regained my senses she'd had my sword off, my breastplate . . . not my gauntlets, though. They still had blood on them— she still had blood on her— and she enjoyed how sharp they were. She liked to feel them digging into her skin— not quite slicing her to ribbons, but pinpricks of pain. The tip of one claw dragging over her throat . . . she enjoyed the danger of it, I think. The threat of knowing I could slice her throat open, and, further, had the nerve to do so.
That the only thing standing between her and that was my goodwill and affection for her . . . she enjoyed living dangerously like that.
[That, and she was not nearly so helpless. If he had gone dark, he knows for a fact she would have snapped his neck long before he could truly hurt her. A thought occurs to him, and he adds:]
You might enjoy such a thing, yourself. You complain about them often enough, but I think you would like it if I had you at my mercy like that. Your throat bared and all of you wondering if I would decide to exert just a little pressure and draw blood . . .
Or is it that you'd only enjoy it if I was at your mercy?
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no subject
[Because this is far easier over voice. Fenris doesn't bother with greetings; just puts him on speaker, holding the phone up while he settles in bed.]
I do not know if I'd call her nice, Harlan. She could be kind, if she wished, especially to Merrill— but nice? No.
[He tucks one hand under his head.]
She was vicious. Ruthless. And frighteningly cheerful during battle, [he says with a small, rumbling chuckle.] I was walking home at night from the Hanged Man. Gangs aren't uncommon in Kirkwall; it was not a shock to be mugged, and I did not mind the fight. But they were more overwhelming than I had anticipated.
I had killed two already. One I stabbed through the stomach; the other's head was removed. But I was drunk, and they were numerous. Four were left. Two of them had me against a wall; one was intent on slicing me open.
And then there was Isabela.
[The smile is so evident in his voice.]
She wields two blades. She could have been done with them in an instant, but she decided to enjoy herself. She announced herself with a taunt, but they did not take her seriously until she had slit a throat. Then they released me, but ah, it was too late . . .
I suppose I could have helped her. But I enjoyed watching instead.
[Hm hm hm . . .]
Shall I tell you how she dismembered them, Harlan?
no subject
Thank god Fenris immediately starts talking, too. Skipping straight past any preamble is exactly Harlan's speed. Even better, all he has to do for the moment is listen.
He's spent most of their conversation leaned up against the window of his hotel room, the lights off so he could survey the city below. He's on a high enough floor that he doesn't need to worry about privacy, but he pulls the curtain shut anyway, leaving just enough light peeking in to navigate the room. Fenris asks his question just as Harlan sits down on the edge of the bed.]
Obviously. Are you gonna gloss over that, too? "His head was removed." Come on.
[There's no real effort in the sassing, just nerves.]
no subject
[It's tart, teasing in the horribly gory way they can get. Fenris tips his head back, his eyes closing as he remembers. It was a good night. Even those first awful moments, when he'd had his back up to the wall and a blade coming ever-closer, weren't so bad. He's a deadly man; there was no question of his life being in danger. Just inconvenience, and maybe the loss of a few coins.]
The first took a blade to his back, but it did not linger there long. Isabela specializes in moving swiftly and applying any number of precise, deadly cuts. To his arms, his stomach, his thighs . . . he fell swiftly, but she was not done yet. He was still alive, and people have a way of getting to their feet for some heroic last stand. He staggered up, bleeding freely already, coloring the cobblestones scarlet.
[He lifts one leg idly, flexing it in the semi-darkness, feeling the pleasant burn in his calf as he does.]
So she cut through his heel chords.
[Or his Achilles tendons, if your culture is based around such mythos.]
No getting up after that. He lay there uselessly, his heart working against him as it pumped his blood steadily out of his body. I do not know how long he lived after that. Minutes, perhaps. She is, if nothing else, terribly efficient.
The other, who by this time had released me and grabbed his sword, was harder. He put up a decent fight, and for a time fended her off, but he stumbled in his comrade's blood, and that was all the opening she needed. Within half a second she had one of her blades sunk deep into his stomach. She sliced him open, til his innards spilled onto the streets. The other blade sliced into his chest, then his throat. I think it was the last that killed him, but there was no coming back from the wound from his stomach.
[He laughs quietly.]
And then she rushed me. Covered in blood and hungry to sate a different sort of lust.
no subject
[But there's approval in his voice. It is gross—beheading and disemboweling don't cater to his very specific tastes—but he appreciates the visual nonetheless. It's fittingly brutal.
He does like the sound of Isabela, though. Death by a thousand cuts is a more exciting tactic to him than one big showstopper. He prefers to draw it out, make a game of it. especially if the other guy was trying to kill him first. He imagines there's a special sort of satisfaction in that, bleeding someone out not just because he could, but because he won. And right there in the open too, a murder that he wouldn't have to sweep under the rug.
That's an interesting thought, too: Getting to show off like that. Killing with an audience has never been of interest to him, but he does like the thought of someone getting to witness glimpses of it, the moments he's proud of, his version of Isabela's three-part finishing move. Evisceration may not be his style, but god, what must it feel like? Tearing a knife through a body is more difficult than you might think, especially with muscles and tendons getting in the way. Slicing someone up like that takes effort, and he can't help but replay the image of her slashing through a body in three quick, elegant motions over and over again in his head.
He lies back on his own bed. Normally he'd opt for speakerphone, but he likes the closeness of Fenris' voice in his ear for something like this.]
She's got the right idea when it comes to foreplay. Tell me you didn't fuck right there on the street.
no subject
She wished to. And I will not say I didn't consider it. But Bela is best savored, and fucking her against an alley wall wouldn't let me take her apart inch by inch.
[His voice dips a little lower. Not on purpose, not the way he does sometimes when he wants to menace people, but naturally.]
We began in the hallway. She was particularly good at removing my armor; she was adept, too, in getting me exactly how she wanted me. By the time I had regained my senses she'd had my sword off, my breastplate . . . not my gauntlets, though. They still had blood on them— she still had blood on her— and she enjoyed how sharp they were. She liked to feel them digging into her skin— not quite slicing her to ribbons, but pinpricks of pain. The tip of one claw dragging over her throat . . . she enjoyed the danger of it, I think. The threat of knowing I could slice her throat open, and, further, had the nerve to do so.
That the only thing standing between her and that was my goodwill and affection for her . . . she enjoyed living dangerously like that.
[That, and she was not nearly so helpless. If he had gone dark, he knows for a fact she would have snapped his neck long before he could truly hurt her. A thought occurs to him, and he adds:]
You might enjoy such a thing, yourself. You complain about them often enough, but I think you would like it if I had you at my mercy like that. Your throat bared and all of you wondering if I would decide to exert just a little pressure and draw blood . . .
Or is it that you'd only enjoy it if I was at your mercy?